1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to pharmaceutical compositions, methods and kits that provide for the early diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. More particularly, the present invention relates to pharmaceutical compositions containing uteroglobin for treating or inhibiting metastasis of breast epithelial tumor cells and methods of using the same to treat or inhibit metastasis of breast epithelial tumor cells. The present invention also relates to methods and kits for early diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer by assaying for uteroglobin and comparing the results against control cells.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Cancers develop from uncontrolled multiplication of cells. All cancers are life threatening, and breast cancer remains the major cause of cancer death among females.
It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that there exists a need for effective treatments and a more sensitive and less invasive method of early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer than those treatments and methods currently in use.
Breast cancer presents inherent difficulties in regard to the ease with which it is detected and diagnosed. This is in contrast to detection of some other common cancers, including skin and cervical cancers, the latter of which is based on cytomorphologic screening techniques.
There have been several attempts to develop improved methods of breast cancer detection and diagnosis. In the attempts to improve methods of detection and diagnosis of breast cancer, numerous studies have searched for oncogene mutations, gene amplification, and loss of heterozygosity in invasive breast cancer (Callahan, et al., 1992; Cheickh, et al., 1992; Chen, et al., 1992; and Lippman, et al. 1990). However, few studies of breast cancer have analyzed uteroglobin, uteroglobin mutations and/or altered uteroglobin gene expression in cancer or in pre-invasive neoplastic conditions. Further, none of the studies have developed treatments and methods directly responsive to both pre-invasive conditions and metastatic cancers.